( dlwintermia )

Comments made by dlwintermia

I hate being such a nudge, but I've spent my entire adult life, which is over 45 years, reading about food, cooking and health. I started with the famous (at that time) or infamous Adelle Davis. Since then, from time to time, I've latched on to other food saviors, the latest one being Andrew Weil.

Now, I realize that it doesn't matter what you eat, rather just how much of it you eat.

This morning I was up early to go to the hospital for an ultra-scan of my liver. Since I was finished by 7:15, I thought I'd go to Trader Joe's in Mission Valley. Fortunately I had a book with me so that I could read while I waited for them to open at 8:00 AM. While waiting an entire carload of obese women pulled up to do their shopping. I don't know if you've noticed, but now the people who shop in Trader Joe's are also getting bigger and bigger. Is this healthy? Does it really matter what they eat when they're piling on the pounds in preparation for their audition for "My 600 pound life?"

After my more than 45 years as an adult I have learned a few things. One, it probably doesn't matter so much about what you eat, rather how much of it you eat. Have a little fun! Stress and eating as a result of stress do far more damage to your body and your mind than laughing your butt off at a movie. Lastly, I have lived in France for a good ten years and never reject quality for quantity. They don't even sell margarine in France. The French can't figure out what it is and why anyone would eat it. There's nothing wrong with loving food and wine (wine being a food). Kick back, never take less than two hours for lunch and three hours for dinner and I guarantee you will live longer. Have a conversation at a table while you're eating will help too. Don't eat together as a family sitting on the couch in front of the TV.

Okay, you have my guidelines. My last thought is that all of us have better things to do than make up guidelines which will change again in a couple of years. Follow my guidelines and you will have a much healthier and happier life. Anxiously await formulated guidelines from health organizations and the government and you'll be dead before they can make any decisions about what we should or shouldn't eat.

Pain killers and their use are a bag of worms. Often when I see that the VA is investigating something, I get worried. Personally, I have been on pain killers under VA care since 2001. I have chronic pain and the pain is complicated. To assist in the relief I have taken Tai Chi, meditation, hot baths, long walks and just about every avenue of relief. So, I haven't just sat back and medicated myself into a stupor.

My hope is that the VA doesn't over-react to this review and start the process of pulling people off of medications that they need to handle the pain they are tolerating. In my opinion, the VA could provide more hand-holding psychological support. I've discovered it depends to a great degree to which hospital you are being treated by. I find support very helpful and now I receive almost none. At times I feel I am really on my own.

Please, let's all approach this with caution and not make any rushed decisions. Pain is awful to deal with and it's often easy for the people prescribing relief to just curtail what they are doing or have done and in this process they leave the poor vet alone to deal with it. There's always more than enough of "cover your own ass" going on too.

There's something about Nathan Fletcher that gives me the creeps. I'm sorry, but I can't seem to bring myself to trust a man that has changed his position so many times. Also, little things like his voting history while he was running for public office. While running for a new office, he completely ignored the office that he held. If missing the votes is miss-stated at 74%, then what is the correct figure? He pulls endorsements out of his hat like rabbits, but then how many hats does he have and how many different kinds of rabbits live in these hats?

He also seems to miss a lot of important venues, where he might be able to clarify some of his spotty history. How does he or maybe I should say who decides what he should go to and what he can afford to miss? At the end of the day, I always have more questions about Mr. Fletcher than I have answers for previous questions. He does keep you on your toes while you are trying to understand him.

Perhaps what he needs to do is get a job, keep it for a decent length of time and build a history that you can believe in. Frankly, I wouldn't even hire him for a job let alone elect him to an important public office. In my mind, I see a man who is always campaigning for the next position, but fails to perform well in the one that he holds.

After the recent debacle in San Diego, do we need another one right behind the one we still haven't really cleaned up? Obviously we made a mistake trusting the "professional" women who so wholeheartedly endorsed our former major, then turned around and accused him of behaving unprofessionally just a few months later. It's difficult to keep all of the stories straight in San Diego county. However, I'd like to make my decisions one at a time. My first one then is to find a mayoral candidate that I can trust. Any ideas?

This entire affair is getting so boring. Could we (the people) please move on to the more pressing issue, which is government. This is a pure and simple witch-hunt. Yes, his behavior was totally inappropriate and embarrassing, but he must have learned a lesson from this excessive badgering by a group of women that had more than ample time to come forward before and are in their own right successful and should be capable of handling his shenanigans on their own. These are not weak, uneducated or necessarily vulnerable women. We need a functioning government and we (including most of the women) elected Bob to do the job. So, let's move on and ditch the utterly idiotic recall.

This is going to be a real fight, but Filner should hang in there. The wording and actions of the recall committee are as unfortunate as Filner's actions in the past. This is plainly a witch-hunt and it is unfortunate that only the city will really suffer from it. Bob has the stamina and determination to stay and his actions will be under diligent scrutiny in the future. We need to move forward, not backwards. Filner has apologized, sought out professional help and now he needs to demonstrate that he has learned something he should have known in his gut, even if he didn't receive the training from the city that is mandatory.

I guess I need to step back into this, since my post helped to generate a lot of other post in response. I find referrals to Filner's crimes odd in the sense that his crimes have to be considered soft, unless he actually engaged in non-consensual acts of sex. In the last century, during which I lived more than half, what Filner did would never have been considered crimes, let alone outside of normal behavior. Society changes and as it changes it legislates what is acceptable and not acceptable behavior. I'll openly admit I skim most of the articles I read regarding Filner because I still haven't read anything that went beyond "bad boy" behavior. I don't approve of it, but then how many, some actually not very attractive, women didn't secretly find some of his attention flattering? Maybe that's why not one of them bothered to alert the public to these horrible crimes he's accused of committing. I find most of this affair to be nothing but pure nonsense. I'll stand by my earlier comment that the women who didn't come forward to report these purported crimes are as guilty as he is because isn't it a crime to not report crimes? The only real crime is that we elected someone who perhaps shouldn't have been elected, but we did it because these victims never spoke up.

The real tragedy of "Filner affair" is that we went through an election process that elected a mayor to do a job that he can not now do because of all of these people in positions of power and leadership who said nothing before, but are now paralyzing our city government by their actions, not Filner's. This unique, American, tattletale behavior does nothing but help to destroy the political process in this country. Now San Diego will sit in its stink while we either go through a childish process of recall or let the castrated major complete his term. I hope all of these people, especially the women who have now come forward, are pleased with their behavior. I believe they should be held responsible for their actions, or lack of them, that will leave us to deal with this mess. If we aren't going to recall all of them or ask for their resignations, then we should. Is this just some kind of sweet revenge?

When people don't win a run for public office, why don't they just retire from politics and go get a job? Unfortunately, it seems that some individuals have a need to feed at the public's teat, rather than just work for a living. I think Carl is another one of those who will use the public's money rather than make his own. I find him boring, more than two-faced and very much in need of some rest and relaxation at his own expense, rather than ours.